really great game, first time playing this series and gotta be honest, i had fun while not knowing how to play cuz i didnt read any of the controls lol

Great to see another installment of this series
I've been playing quite a lot lately and i like the general idea and direction of the game: it seems like a lot more is being put towards skills and options rather than just pure stats.
in particular i love the speed points as it opens up so many more options.
That being said there are quite a few balance issues most likely related to the transition:

some skills are just far worse than others. I'm pretty much never taking evasive over shield block if i have a shield, even if i'm a dex build. likewise most spells that require 12/14 int are difficult to justify investing into int for.

Character wise it feels like some characters are just clearly better. if i had to group them and order them:
Warrior Ranger Barbarian
Enchanter Duelist Rouge
Necromancer
Ice Mage Storm Mage Fire Mage
as you'll probally note pretty much all of the mages are weak compared to the other classes. They're far from Awful or unplayable or anything - they can still win frequently. Its just that they all generally require a lot more skill to play and options to manage for frankly worse results than all the other characters.
covering a few of the odder placements in more detail

Strength guys: strength is easily the best attribute currently and just does so much. No equip limits high damage and massive health to abuse. in theory you struggle with healers and the big tanky enemies but in practice they both have amazing aoe to divert heals and plenty of knockback to straight up brawl stronger enemies. They don't really have any weaknesses and multiclass way better than any other class. Warrior is above barbarian by a bit mostly because starting with a shield is great and shield blocking and recovery are crazy. you can easily get ~90% block chance with only little ability power boost and the flat ~65% buff to health against most attacks is crazy when you already have such a huge amount. Recovery is essentally a free health potion and makes it very easy to conserve resources for important fights and put health potions into even more bulk

Ranger: has like all the best talents - strafe attack is honestly busted even on melee characters and strafe 2 easily gives ranger 7-8 attacks late game for essentially free. Likewise 2 extra range and shooting through characters not only buffs your aoe tunnel shot but also lets you just straight up snipe 1/2 threating enemy types. Currently he's just "mage but has more range, damage target choice burst and can also easily run away". all he really loses is utility spells and passives

Enchanter is a good mage for the wrong reasons: they're essentially hard carried by dominate. Its their best spell by far and with the passive staff damage boost you can pretty consistantly get to it. Outside of dominate they're honestly pretty bad with discord being mid at best and confusion being a good spell- but only for stalling since its unlikely the short duration will actually do much damage. in general they lack damage. i think dominate might genuinely be their best damage talent and the best spell in the game.

Duelist and rouge: they're both generally well balance and not overly reliant on any specific skills. The rouge stealth package feels akward and a bit weak to use so between the 2 of them they're generally much more looking to multiclass or pick up some ranger talents to make up the damage.

Necromancer: has the most complete kit out of all the mages, there's a lot of fun synergies with toxic cloud/aura of death/skeletons(make allies count for life tap!). Life spike honestly feels a bit out of place strangely. Importantly necromancer really lacks burst damage and is very reliant on toxic cloud to kill things. They also really really want to find a good damage spell to use alongside their kit as well as preferably a bit of surviability mid game before skeletons are tanky enough to help. Still, while a little undertuned they're quite strong with a little out of class support. It likely really really doesn't help that 3 of the zones in the game have lots of toxic resistant enemies and that these completely ignore one of his spells.

The rest of the mages are basically all bad and for a pretty wide variety of reasons
ice mage: freezing cloud is really good! cone of cold also helps to push back and stall a lot and can help quite a bit. you have no damage outside of these and you're going to run out of mana very very quickly because cone does low damage and cloud is very mana intensive. ice shield is nice as a defensive tool, but usually just becomes weird fortitude sidegrade. you'll need it to compensate the low hp and lack of tools to deal with pretty much and ranged attackers but its pretty painful to use (as an aside ui thing it would be nice to see ice shield displayed on the character much like the enemies is: it'd make keeping track a lot easier.). While on the surface it looks like a better hp type you can't restore it using mushrooms at all and waiting for it to fully recover usually takes far more time than just using a mushroom it also doesn't make mushrooms recover more proportially. its best practicality is more or less just preventing poison attacks. (at least i think it does? it never lasts very long but i've never been poisoned with it still up).
More importantly you basically just die to dangerous enemies without multiclassing and while core is pretty free ice caves are a bit of a nightmare zone

shock: unlike the prior mages has fantastic burst damage and arguably the best starting spell. lightning bolt is fantastic for dealing with problem enemies and does great aoe, it even has a great upgraded version, a trait only shared with ice mage. The problem is that you don't have many defensive tools at all: while the wind aura is fantastic and one of the best in the game it really relys on already having some hp to use the reflection when you're on 40 health 3-4 8 damage ranged attacks and you're pretty much already in resource use mode. somewhat suprisingly this actually makes shock mage struggle really hard with archer hordes, particularly fast ones like drachnids or when surrounded or cornered. they also struggle a lot with tanky ranged enemies- elementals and the ranged slime cube are lethal. fast enemies are also nightmare fuel since they'll usually break off from aoeable range pretty quickly. overall they're likely the strongest of these 3, but they still struggle really hard to just stay alive

fire mage:
imo weakest character in the game. Fire ball is a great spell, its upgrade is bad. unlike shock that gains a practically assured +50% on likely an important target and more range fireball often can't even target an ideal target because of the aoe, and does not gain any extra range, leaving you still very vulnerable to any ranged enemy- they all outrange you on diagonals, sometimes by 2-3 moves depending on the type. Burst of flames does great damage, but is very position dependant - sometimes its straight up useless. flame portal is actually really strong, but it cuts into an already limited mana pool. Oftentimes its strongest when you've *already* used resources or are planning to. Pretty much every zone is bad for you: water shuts down your damage and toxic waste ALSO shuts down your damage. 2/3 first sidetracks are bad so you'll often go to sidetrack 2. Which also has 2/3 zones as really bad for you: arcane tower is full of things that outrange you and summon, as well as enemies that can resist your attacks and teleport to prevent your escape if you're unlucky. as far as defenses fire shield is actually really really good, it makes core probally preferable to sewers if you can find another attack spell, but that's kind of the problem, you're really reliant on finding something that isn't using your element and 30% flame resist is ultimately not actually buffing your durability much when you again, still die in 5 hits it'll maybe buy you an extra turn. the damage shield is very useful for fast swarmers provided its not flame bats, but again you're not really capable of taking hits without equip luck or other attribute investment, which then means less mana and damage, which then means you kill less which then means you're back to being out of mana and swarmed and not much has changed.
I'll say again these characters are far from impossible to win with, in fact i'd argue that like with most characters you can win nearly every time, its just much harder for them than every other character in the game, and they're generally harder characters to play to begin with thanks to relying on multiclassing and abilities more.

Powerful enemies: i realise now that i just said this without much explaination
pretty much the only enemies that can really kill you can be fit into a few small categories

Healers: basically singlehandedly make fights hard. A single healer will often out heal your damage on some classes and giving speed to slow enemies practically turns them into haste golems.

Fast powerful attackers: stuff like warrior bee, scorpions, beserkers, haste golems, as well as any other tanky enemy that gets the fast buff. you can't really run or stall against them and they'll very easily kill you, particularly elites. A single fast obsidan golem is easily a run ender. i'll notably seperate them from the fast swarmers, as most characters have enough aoe to handle those, and even when you don't it only takes a chokepoint or some protective gear to make them much more managable.

Almost every enemy in these categories is just by default really scary, more so than any others really. you leave a summoner alive they'll make 2 weak wolves: you leave the healer alive and they double the health of stuff and heal for like 50 health. Yendor priests get particular mention for both group heal and torment doing huge amounts of damage

Another thing i'll mention is that a lot of boss rewards can feel very underwhelming. In particular it feels strange to have 2 endgame bosses drop 2 handed weapons that essentially only 2 classes would really want to use over a shield or utility charm. likewise a lot of area 2 minibosses drop swords, but if i already have the bloody axe i have no real reason to use them: the aoe is worth way more if i'm a melee character. A particularly bad example would be the area 2 veil. Against all but an very specific set of enemies its 10% ability power - essentially just hatx2. i don't think i'd use it if a boss just dropped a 2 encumberance 2 protection gloves, and i'd argue this is exactly that.

Robes all feel really really weak. the 10% ability power is minimal at best and there are tons of really strong chestplates. i rarely even find myself using the elemental ones.

Ring of wealth essentially has no downside: you can just leave the gold piles and collect them later with it equipped. you don't even have to use the equip slot.

while it has bailed out inumerable of my runs there should probally be less uses restored when enchanting wands: getting 4-5 extra uses is very overpowered - especially for something like the ogre boss drop that summons 8 wolves. i'd suggest something like 2-3 per scroll extra, so that you'd still consider it over enchanting equipment. potentally even make it depend on the wand type/consumable you use it on.

It could have been great had it not been so difficult. When standing next to a pit to the north and an open floor to the south, no matter what key I pushed the first time around it would say "Jump into the pit?"

특정구간 물량시발좀 조정하라고 말좀처들어먹어라 개등신년아ㅡㅡ 아시발 니새기이거 혼자테스트처굴려서 몇층까지갔냐? 수정처하라니가 할생각좃도없네 ㅡㅡ

Pretty good but would be better if the rankings included other players, so we could compete against one another.